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 AFRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES

CONCEIVING
MOZAMBIQUE
John A. Marcum
African Histories and Modernities

Series Editors
Toyin Falola
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX, USA

Matthew M. Heaton
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, USA
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions
to and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a
particular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to
refute the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in ori-
gin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades.
Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the
series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on
an important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space
in which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While
privileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series
will also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the histori-
cal and the contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing
understandings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect
the way we think about African and global histories.

Editorial Board
Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University
Kwabena Akurang-Parry, History, Shippensburg University
Samuel O. Oloruntoba, History, University of North Carolina,
Wilmington
Tyler Fleming, History, University of Louisville
Barbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of
Texas at Austin
Emmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island
Akin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina,
Charlotte

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14758
 John A. Marcum
Author

Edmund Burke III · Michael W. Clough

Editors

Conceiving
Mozambique
Author Editors
John A. Marcum Edmund Burke III
Santa Cruz, CA, USA University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Michael W. Clough
Oakland, CA, USA

African Histories and Modernities

ISBN 978-3-319-65986-2 ISBN 978-3-319-65987-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65987-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951543

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: © iStock/Getty Images Plus

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Foreword

In the words of its author, John A. Marcum, the purpose of Conceiving

Mozambique is to provide an “independent and probing review and
understanding of the Mozambique struggle for independence.” The
book seeks to provide a necessary starting point for national reconcilia-
tion and the construction of a more just and democratic future for the
country.
Marcum was the leading scholar on the liberation struggle in
Portuguese Africa. His two volumes on Angola, The Angolan Revolution,
Vol. 1, The Anatomy of an Explosion (1969), and Vol. 2, Exile Politics
and Guerrilla Warfare, 1962–1976 (1978), have since their appearance
been widely recognized as the authoritative account of the protracted
Angolan liberation struggle.
Conceiving Mozambique is in some respects the companion piece
to these two works. It is based upon authoritative documentation of
the gestation period of the Mozambique liberation struggle, including
archival documents, abundant unpublished letters, diaries, and verba-
tim records of conversations with many of the principals. Part of a much
larger work which he never got to complete, Conceiving Mozambique
is a dispassionate look at the liberation struggle. It was completed by
Marcum shortly before his death in 2013.
The book is clearly written in non-academic prose and takes the form
of a detailed political history of the Mozambican liberation process,
with particular attention to the early years. It is intended for those inter-
ested in the history of Mozambique, ex-Portuguese Africa, and African

v
vi    Foreword

development. It introduces the major and many of the minor dramatis

personae effectively.
For more on my role in the preparation of the manuscript, please see
the Acknowledgements.
Michael Clough, the co-editor of this book, gave the manuscript its
current shape, while remaining faithful to Marcum’s original text. He
also took the time to compare the footnotes with the materials in the
John A. Marcum Papers in the Africa collection at Stanford University
Library. For an overview of the Marcum Papers, please consult the web-
site. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/8447318
Clough was a close friend and colleague of Marcum in the early
1980s, and is the author of “John Marcum and America’s Missed
Opportunities in Africa,” with which this book begins. Mike was a Ph.D.
candidate at the University of California, Berkeley and completing his
dissertation on US Policy toward Revolutionary Change in Southern
Africa when he and John first met. From 1980 to 1986, Mike taught
at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. In 1985–86
he served as the study director for the Secretary of State’s Advisory
Committee on South Africa. From 1987 to 1996 he directed the
Council on Foreign Relations’ African Studies Program. Before chang-
ing careers in 2001, Mike wrote extensively on US policy toward Africa,
the domestic politics of American foreign policy, and globalization. He is
the author of Free At Last?: U.S. Policy toward Africa and the End of the
Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 1992). Mike is cur-
rently a criminal defense attorney and, among other clients, represents
five inmates on California’s death row.

Santa Cruz, USA Edmund Burke III

 Preface

Anti-colonial struggles in Africa during the l960s fascinated me as a

young academic and director of a scholarship program for African ref-
ugee students. One result was a two-volume study of the Angolan
Revolution. The exigencies of an ensuing academic career delayed a simi-
lar account of the burst of nationalist awareness and activity that consti-
tuted the initial, conceptual phase of the struggle for independence in
Portugal’s other major African colony, Mozambique. From the fringes of
that drama, I witnessed contesting ideas and conflicting ambitions within
a conflict that ended in the collapse of Portuguese rule and a brief but
bloody triumph of Marxist dogmatism, replete with forced collectiviza-
tion, military dictatorship, and civil war.
Sequentially, a Eurafrican fantasy gave way to nationalist espousals of
liberal nationalism, black populism, and orthodox Marxism. Drawing on
ephemeral documents, personal interviews, and verbatim excerpts from
the unpublished or buried words of key players, this historical narra-
tive attempts to go beyond the myths, simplifications, doctrinal hyper-
bole, and hagiography that may accompany and obfuscate accounts of
an anti-colonial insurgency. With divergent ethnic and regional identi-
ties, ambitions, ideologies, educational levels, and strategic priorities
Mozambique’s founders competed for political power. Their aspirations
intertwined, combined, dissembled, hardened, and shaped the strug-
gle. Much of the history of the early years of the independence strug-
gle has been distorted, blurred, or buried by the dictates of political

vii
viii    Preface

convenience. My goal has been to recover, reconstruct, and reveal a

more accurate account of what happened.
Today as a contemporary Mozambican polity fashions the country’s
future in a global digital age, the legacies of the formative period of con-
ceptual clash, exile politics, and Cold War intrusion remain vital to an
understanding of what caused a bloody civil war to follow independence
yet ultimately to lead a war-weary society to a fragile political reconcilia-
tion and a corruption-flawed but increasingly democratic state.

Santa Cruz, CA, USA John A. Marcum

 Acknowledgements

John Marcum’s Acknowledgements

I owe special thanks to former Mozambican students, among them
nationalist pioneers such as Joao Nhambiu and Joseph Massinga, among
others, for sharing their diverse experiences, insights and perspectives;
to Janet Mondlane for making available personal archives housed at the
University of Southern California; to Manuel de Araujo of the Centro
de Estudos Moçambicanos e Internacionais (Maputo) for his encour-
agement; and to American actors and observers, notably J. Wayne
Fredericks, George Houser, Douglas Wheeler, and Gerald Bender.

Edmund Burke’s Acknowledgements

Although John Marcum left a completed manuscript of Conceiving
Mozambique when he died, a great deal of work was required to produce
a clean manuscript, given that the book was written over the last decades of
Marcum’s life on a variety of different word-processing systems. To produce
the final version of the manuscript a host of unsuspected little problems, the
result of the geological deposits of each generation of word-processing, had
to be debugged. Let them all be thanked according to their contributions:
Former colleagues Peter Kenez and Will Vrolman each played impor-
tant roles in the first phase of untangling the Marcum manuscript, and
each is here abundantly thanked. Unfortunately the untangling process
was only in its infancy.

ix
x    Acknowledgements

Had it not been for the amazing Candace Freiwald whose career as a
typist and editor spanned the digital word-processing era, we would still
be finalizing the manuscript. That Candace accomplished this with her
usual combination of hard work, skill, and good humor is all the more
amazing. In the process, she earned my undying gratitude and that of
Gwen Marcum (as well as that of all of readers of this book).
Rachel Hohn assisted in the process of preparing the Marcum
Collection for shipment to Stanford University Press. We are grateful to
her as well.

Photo Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank the owners of the photos included here for their gen-
erosity
in authorizing their publication.
-The photo of John Marcum, George Houser, and others with
Kwame Nkrumah at the 1958 All-African People’s Congress was kindly
supplied by the family of the late George Houser.
-The photo of John Marcum with some unknown African students
was taken in 1960 on the occasion of a meeting of Crossroads Africa. It
is supplied by Gwen Marcum, John’s widow.
-We are grateful to Ambassador Lopez Tembe Ndelane for the group
portrait of the founding members of UDENAMO.
-Shannon Moeser has made available the portrait of Leo Milas printed
in this book, for which we are most thankful.
 Contents

1 Eduardo Mondlane 1

2 The Rise of Mozambican Nationalism 17

3 Frelimo 35

4 The Ravages of Exile Politics 55

5 OAU, UN, and USA 73

6 Mondlane in Dar es Salaam 85

7 New Contenders 101

8 Students vs. Soldiers 107

9 Mondlane’s Assasination 129

10 The Collapse of Portugal 155

11 Independent Mozambique 171

xi
xii    Contents

Bibliography 189

Index 197
 About the Editors

Edmund (“Terry”) Burke III is Research Professor of History Emeritus

at the University of California at Santa Cruz. After John Marcum’s death
he undertook to bring the final manuscript into publishable form as a trib-
ute to Marcum his friend and colleague of long standing.
Burke is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on
Middle East and North African history, orientalism, and environmental
history. His recent books include: The Ethnographic State: France and
Moroccan Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); The
Environment and World History, 1500–2000 (University of California
Press, 2009); and Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics
(University of Nebraska Press, 2008).
Michael (“Mike”) Clough became a close friend and colleague of John
in the early 1980s, when Mike was teaching at the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, California, and completing his dissertation on US
Policy toward Revolutionary Change in Southern Africa. In 1985–86
Mike served as the study director for the Secretary of State’s Advisory
Committee on South Africa. From 1987 to 1996 he directed the
Council on Foreign Relations’ African Studies Program. Before changing
careers in 2001, Mike wrote extensively on US policy toward Africa, the
domestic politics of American foreign policy, and globalization. He is the
author of Free At Last: U.S. Policy toward Africa and the End of the Cold
War. Mike is now a criminal defense attorney and, among other clients,
represents five inmates on California’s death row.

xiii
 Abbreviations

ACOA American Committee on Africa

ANC African National Congress
CEMO Center for Mozambican and International Studies
CIMADE Inter-Movement Committee to the Émigrés
CLM Council for the Liberation of Mozambique
CONCP Conference of Portuguese African Nationalist Movements
FRELIMO Front for the Liberation of Mozambique
GRAE Guinea Revolutionary Government in Exile
KANU Kenya African National Union
MAC Anti-Colonialist Movement
MANU Mozambique African National Union
MONIREMO Movement for Unity and Reconciliation
MPLA National Movement for the Liberation of Angola
MRUPP Mozambique Revolutionary United People’s Party
NESAM Central of African Secondary Students in Mozambique
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OAU Organization of African Unity
PAC Pan Africanist Congress
PAFMECSA Pan-African Movement of East, Central and Southern Africa
PAIGC African Party of Guinea and Cape Verde
PCN Coalition Party of Mozambique
PIDE Portuguese secret police
RAWU African Worker’s Railways Union
RENAMO Mozambican National Resistance Organization
SNASP National Popular Security Service
SRANC Southern Rhodesia African National Congress

xv
xvi    Abbreviations

TANU Tanganyika African National Union

UDENAMO Mozambican Democratic National Union
UGEAN General Union of Black African Students Under Portuguese
Colonial Domination
UNEMO Union of National Mozambican Students
 List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 John Marcum, Kwame Nkrumah, and others at the

1958 All-Africa People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana 109
Fig. 8.2 John Marcum with African students at Lincoln
University for Crossroads Africa Meeting in 1960 113
Fig. 8.3 Founding members of UDENAMO, date unknown. Right
to left, among others: Seated: Daniel Malhalela, Lopez Tembe,
Absalao Bahule, Lourenço Matola and Silverio Nungo;
Standing: Eli Ndimene, Joao Munguambe, Diwas, Antonio
Murrupa, Adelino Gumane, Urias Simango, Filipe Samuel
Magaia and Fernando Mungaka 125
Fig. 8.4 Leo Milas (aka Leo Clinton Aldridge, Jr., aka
Seifeddine Leo Milas) 126

xvii
 Introduction: John Marcum and
America’s Missed Opportunities in Africa

“Knowledgeable, soft-spoken, fluent in French, and easy to get along

with.”1 That is how George Houser, one of the pioneers of American
efforts to support African liberation movements, described his reasons
for asking John Marcum, a then young professor at Lincoln University,
to accompany him on a long and dangerous hike into rebel territory in
northern Angola in January 1962. Houser’s description was remarkably
apt. Language skills aside, the traits Houser listed explain, in part, why
John was one of the very few prominent voices in the long and divisive
debate over US policy toward southern Africa who was respected and
warmly regarded by both activists like Houser and conservative poli-
cymakers like former US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Chester
Crocker. But the near-universal respect that John earned from diverse
political and ideological quarters was due, most of all, to his ability to
combine his unceasing commitment to ending Portuguese colonialism
with hard-headed, fact-based analysis of Portuguese rule and the nation-
alist movements in Angola and Mozambique.
John completed this book in the final months of an exceptional life.
He conceived it nearly a half-century earlier, in the early 1960s, as part
of an ambitious project to document the struggle to end Portuguese rule
in Angola and Mozambique. The first volume—The Angolan Revolution:
The Anatomy of an Explosion, 1950–1962—was published in 1969.2 It
confirmed John’s position as a preeminent member of the first genera-
tion of American political scientists to focus on post-colonial Africa. Nine

xix
xx    INTRODUCTION: JOHN MARCUM AND AMERICA’S …

years later, after the sudden collapse of Portuguese colonialism, volume

2—The Angolan Revolution: Exile, Politics and Guerrilla Warfare, 1962–
76—was published.3 John collected much of the material that this book
is based on in the 1960s, but his plan for a book on Mozambique was
interrupted as he was increasingly drawn into academic administration
at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and, in 1990, became the
director of the University of California’s system-wide Education Abroad
Program. In 2007, at the age of 80, he finally “retired,” and, despite bat-
tling serious illnesses, completed Conceiving Mozambique.
Like everything else John wrote over the course of his extraordinarily
long academic career, this book was written with a larger purpose. In the
brief concluding section of the manuscript, which John emailed to his
wife, Gwen, in May 2013, he wrote:

By salving its wounds with an historical cleansing Mozambique can unbur-

den its future, free itself from the straitjacket of historical mythology and
dogma and enable its citizens to better comprehend how a long, harsh
colonial rule negatively limited human perceptions and behavior, how
centuries of educational deprivation and arbitrary rule inevitably warped
views of race and ethnicity, and how the shortcomings of military intoler-
ance and class determinism led to authoritarianism, impoverishment and
unspeakable violence. The search for an unvarnished and compassionate
understanding of Mozambique’s past will be crucial over time to the con-
struction of a more just and democratic future. Hopefully the narrative of
the preceding pages may help to provoke such a liberating process.

It is time for the country to clear the political deck and free young minds
from the delimiting outcomes of cruel history. It is time for a new gen-
eration of Mozambicans to explore, think, question, challenge and commit
themselves to the long, arduous step-by-step process of reconceiving and
building a new Mozambique.

The values and hopes reflected in this conclusion are remarkably

similar to those expressed in The Challenge of Africa, a long essay John
published in February 1960.4 Written after the first wave of decoloniza-
tion and before Africa had become a Cold War battleground, that essay
clearly distinguished John from other young political scientists who were
flocking to Africa to begin their academic careers. At the time he wrote
this essay, there were nine independent states in Africa and six more
about to become independent, including the Belgian Congo. The civil
 INTRODUCTION: JOHN MARCUM AND AMERICA’S …    xxi

war in the Congo, which arguably marked the beginning of the Cold
War in Africa, had not begun. For most of those scholars, Africa offered
a unique research opportunity—a chance to witness the birth of states
firsthand, develop new theories of political development, and establish
academic credentials. This group included, most notably, David Apter,
James Coleman, Carl Rosberg, Richard Sklar, Immanuel Wallerstein,
Ruth S. Morgenthau, and Crawford Young.5 They all played leading
roles in developing the study of African politics. But, with the exception
of Morgenthau6 and John A. Davis,7 none of them became engaged in
trying to shape US policy toward Africa in the ways that John did.
As he wrote in The Challenge of Africa, John viewed the emergence
of independent Africa as part of “man’s noble but desperate struggle to
build a more humane, peaceful previous esthetic society.”8 His intended
audience was not other Africanists. Instead, John sought to influence
both “Western” policymakers and the “architects of tomorrow’s Africa”:
the small educated African elite that was then in the forefront of the
African independence movement.9 In a passage that aptly reflected the
perspective John would maintain throughout his life, he wrote:

It is not for the West to try to force its behavioral patterns, values and
institutions upon an unwilling Africa. The West’s “democratic faith,” how-
ever, dictates that it make a real effort to demonstrate the worth of such
Western ideals as political tolerance, democratic process, cultural freedom,
equal social opportunities and limited government. Not an unimportant
part of this demonstration must come through the more perfect realization
of these ideals in the West itself—in the American South and the Iberian
Peninsula, for example.10

After detailing the challenges and opportunities facing Africa, John

concluded: “With a little wisdom, compassion, good fortune and a meas-
ure of outside help, Africans can make their continent into a symbol of
man’s hopes for himself.”11
In light of the developments that followed,12 it is easy to read The
Challenge of Africa as naive and hopelessly idealistic. But that would be a
mistake. John was well aware of the hurdles that would have to be over-
come in order to “construct a peaceful continent of new nations.” It is
only in retrospect that the possibilities that John tried to help Western
policymakers and Africa’s emerging leaders imagine and realize seem not
to have existed.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
snug corner of the plains, where they have built for themselves a
hunting-lodge and kennel. They are within hail of civilisation, but
they depend almost entirely upon the dogs for sustenance, combined
with the efforts of a perfect Soyer of a cook.

“This knight of the gridiron was a famous fellow, and could perform wonders; of
stoical countenance, he was never seen to smile. His whole thoughts were
concentrated in the mysteries of gravies, and the magic transformation of one
animal into another by the art of cookery: in this he excelled to a marvellous
degree. The farce of ordering dinner was always absurd. It was something in this
style. ‘Cook!’ (Cook answers) ‘Coming sar!’ (enter cook).—‘Now, cook, you make a
good dinner; do you hear?’ Cook: ‘Yes, sar: master tell, I make.’—‘Well,
mulligatawny soup.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Calves’ head, with tongue, and brain-sauce.’ ‘Yes,
sar.’—‘Gravy omelette.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Mutton chops.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Fowl cotelets.’ ‘Yes,
sar.’—‘Beefsteaks.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Marrow-bones.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Rissoles.’ ‘Yes, sar.’ All
these various dishes he literally imitated uncommonly well, the different portions
of an elk being their only foundation.”

During a trip of two months at the Horton Plains, Mr Baker killed

forty-three elk, which was working the pack pretty hard. At Newera
Ellia the game, though not quite so plentiful, is sufficiently abundant
to satisfy any reasonable sportsman, and an extract of three months’
hunting, at his own door, from our author’s game-book, shows a
return of eleven bucks, seventeen does, and four hogs.
Though the sport of elk-hunting is most exciting, the recital of elk-
hunting experiences must ever be somewhat monotonous: there is so
little room for varied incident. The hunter follows the music of his
pack over the open, at a long swinging trot, and bursts his way
through the dense jungle, and down the steep bank to the foaming
torrent, in the midst of which the elk is keeping the hounds at bay:—

“There they are in that deep pool formed by the river as it sweeps round the rock.
A buck! a noble fellow! Now he charges at the hounds, and strikes the foremost
beneath the water with his forefeet; up they come again to the surface,—they hear
their master’s well-known shout,—they look round and see his welcome figure on
the steep bank. Another moment, a tremendous splash, and he is among his
hounds, and all are swimming towards their noble game. At them he comes with a
fierce rush. Avoid him as you best can, ye hunters, man, and hounds!”
 This reminds us of an amusing experience of our own, under
somewhat similar circumstances. The master of one of the packs at
Newera Ellia, in those days a good specimen of a Ceylon Nimrod, and
an old elk-hunter, was anxious to show a naval friend of his the sport
in perfection. We happened to be of the party, and before long our
ears were rejoiced with that steady chorus which always tells of a
buck at bay. Away we dashed through the thorny jungle, and arrived
at the edge of a deep black pool, in which the elk was swimming,
surrounded by the entire pack. Another moment and we should have
formed one of the damp but picturesque group, when our naval
friend, who had been left a little in the rear, unused to such rough
work, came up torn and panting. It suddenly occurs to Nimrod, just
as he is going to jump in, that it is hardly civil to his guest to secure
to himself the sportsman’s most delicious moment; he feels the
sacrifice he is making as, with a forced blandness, and an anxious
glance at the buck, he presses his hunting-knife into Captain F.’s
hand, saying, “After you, sir, pray.” “Eh! after me; where?—you don’t
mean me to go in there, do you?” “Certainly not, if you would rather
stay here; in that case be so good as give me the knife, as there is no
time to be lost.” “Oh, ah!—I didn’t understand;—how very stupid! Go
in—oh certainly: I shall be delighted;” and in dashed the gallant
captain with his two-edged blade gleaming in the morning sun. For a
second the waters closed over him, then he appeared spluttering and
choking, and waving aloft the naked steel preparatory to going down
again; it was plain that he could not swim a stroke, and it cost us no
little trouble to pull out the plucky sailor, who took the whole thing
as a matter of course, and would evidently have gone anywhere that
he had been told. It is a difficult matter to stick an elk while
swimming, as the hide is very thick, and the want of any sufficient
purchase renders an effective blow almost impossible. There is also a
great risk of being struck by the elk’s fore-legs, while impetuous
young dogs are apt to take a nip of their master by mistake. A
powerful buck at bay is always a formidable customer, and the
largest dogs may be impaled like kittens if they do not learn to
temper their valour with discretion.
“The only important drawback,” says Mr Baker, “to the pleasure of
elk-hunting is the constant loss of dogs. The best are always sure to
go. What with deaths by boars, leopards, elk, and stray hounds, the
pack is with difficulty maintained. Poor old Bran, who, being a
thorough-bred greyhound, is too fine in the skin for such rough
hunting, has been sewn up in so many places that he is a complete
specimen of needlework;” while Killbuck and Smut, the hero of about
four hundred deaths of elk and boar, have terminated their glorious
careers. Killbuck was pierced by the sharp antlers of a spotted buck,
after a splendid course over the plains in the low country. If the bay
of the deer is not so good as that of the elk, the enjoyment of riding to
your game renders deer-coursing a far more agreeable sport than
elk-hunting. Unfortunately for Killbuck his buck came to bay as
pluckily as any elk, and had pinned the noble hound to the earth,
before his master, who had been thrown in the course of a reckless
gallop, could come up to the rescue. But the boar is the most
destructive animal to the pack, and a fierce immovable bay, in which
every dog joins in an impetuous chorus, is always a dreaded sound to
the hunter, who knows well that tusks, and not antlers, are at work.
The following description of a boar at bay will give some idea of
the scene that then occurs:—

“There was a fight! The underwood was levelled, and the boar rushed to and fro
with Smut, Bran, Lena, and Lucifer, all upon him. Yoick to him! and some of the
most daring of the maddened pack went in. The next instant we were upon him
mingled with a confused mass of hounds; and throwing our whole weight upon the
boar, we gave him repeated thrusts, apparently to little purpose. Round came his
head and gleaming tusks to the attack of his fresh enemies, but old Smut held him
by the nose, and, although the bright tusks were immediately buried in his throat,
the stanch old dog kept his hold. Away went the boar covered by a mass of dogs,
and bearing the greater part of our weight in addition, as we hung on to the
hunting-knives buried in his shoulders. For about fifty paces he tore through the
thick jungle, crashing it like a cobweb. At length he again halted; the dogs, the
boar, and ourselves were mingled in a heap of confusion. All covered with blood
and dirt, our own cheers added to the wild bay of the infuriated hounds, and the
savage roaring of the boar. Still he fought and gashed the dogs right and left. He
stood about thirty-eight inches high, and the largest dogs seemed like puppies
beside him; still not a dog relaxed his hold, and he was covered with wounds. I
made a lucky thrust for the nape of his neck. I felt the point of the knife touch the
bone; the spine was divided, and he fell dead.
“Smut had two severe gashes in the throat, Lena was cut under the ear, and
Bran’s mouth was opened completely up to his ear in a horrible wound.”
 But the boar sometimes comes off victorious; and the death of
poor old Smut has never been revenged. He was almost cut in half
before Mr Baker reached the bay, which lasted for an hour. At the
end of that period, Smut, gashed with many additional wounds, was
expiring, and three of the best remaining dogs were severely
wounded; the dogs were with difficulty called off the victorious
monster; and Mr Baker records, with feelings of profound emotion,
the only defeat he ever experienced, and which terminated fatally to
the gallant leader of his pack.
The usual drawbacks and discomforts attendant upon a new
settlement having been overcome, our author assures us that Newera
Ellia forms a delightful place of residence. But it must not be
supposed that, on the occasion of his second visit to Ceylon, he
confined himself to elk-hunting and agriculture. He is frequently
tempted from his highland home to the elephant country, which is
only about two days’ journey distant; and the latter part of his
volume abounds with exciting descriptions of new encounters with
rogues, involving the usual amount of personal hazard; and lest the
too ardent pursuit of this fascinating sport seems scarcely to justify
the apparent cruelty it involves, it must be remembered that it is not
more cruel to kill a large animal than a small one, though this is a
distinction we are too apt to make; and when the large animal is also
often destructive to life and property, its slaughter is not only
justifiable, but commendable in those who are disposed to risk their
lives for the benefit of the public and their own gratification.
Indeed, so extensive are the ravages committed by elephants, that
a price is offered by government for their tails; since, however, the
procuring of tails has become a fashionable amusement among
Europeans, the reward has been reduced to the miserable sum of 7s.
6d. The Moorish part of the community were the recognised
elephant-slayers, so long as there was profit to be made by these
means. They now devote themselves almost entirely to the capture of
elephants alive for the purpose of exportation to India. Mr Baker
gives an amusing account of having assisted to catch an elephant. He
started with his brother and thirty Moormen, armed with ropes,
towards a herd of seven, of whose presence in the neighbourhood
intelligence had been received. Upon coming in sight of the herd, one
was selected for capture. Mr Baker and his brother and their gun-
bearers, taking the wind, advance under cover of the jungle to open
the ball. This they do in style, bagging six elephants in almost the
same number of minutes. The seventh starts off in full retreat with
the multitude at his heels. At last an active Moorman dexterously
throws a noose of thick but finely twisted hide rope over one of his
hind-legs. Following the line which the unconscious elephant trails
after him like a long snake, they wait until he enters the jungle, and
then unceremoniously check his further progress by taking a double
turn round a tree.

“Any but a hide rope of that diameter must have given way; but this stretched
like a harp-string, and, at every effort to break it, the yielding elasticity of the hide
threw him upon his head, and the sudden contraction after the fall jerked his leg
back to its full length.
“After many vain but tremendous efforts to free himself, he turned his rage upon
his pursuers, and charged every one right and left; but he was safely tied, and we
took some little pleasure in teasing him. He had no more chance than a fly in a
spider’s web. As he charged in one direction, several nooses were thrown round his
hind-legs; then his trunk was caught in a slip-knot, then his fore-legs, then his
neck, and the ends of all these ropes being brought together and hauled tight, he
was effectually hobbled.
“This had taken some time to effect (about half an hour), and we now
commenced a species of harness to enable us to drive him to the village.
“The first thing was to secure his trunk by tying it to one of his fore-legs; this leg
was then fastened with a slack rope to one of his hind-legs, which prevented him
from taking a longer stride than about two feet; his neck was then tied to his other
fore-leg, and two ropes were made fast to both his fore and hind legs; the ends of
these ropes being manned by thirty men.”

He was then driven to the village, and three days afterwards was
sufficiently tamed to be mounted. His value was then about £15.
Mr Baker at last becomes as dainty in his elephant-shooting as we
have already found him in the deer country. Where elephants are
abundant he despises a herd, and confines himself to rogues, where
they are procurable, always singling out the most vicious-looking,
and this must in some measure account for the redundancy of
adventure in his narrative. For though elephant-shooting is always
attended with some risk, the comparative extent of this depends
entirely upon the manner in which the sport is pursued. If tails are
the desiderata, then a herd in a nice open jungle presents the best
chance of obtaining a supply with the least possible amount of
personal danger; but if sport is really sought, then a rogue upon the
open is certain to afford enough to satisfy the most ardent Nimrod
that ever drew trigger. The fatigue of elephant-shooting is something
inconceivable to those who have not for six or eight consecutive
hours laboured under a tropical sun with a heavy rifle,—the barrels
of which are so hot that they can scarcely be touched,—over wide
plains, and through long grass, matted over hidden rocks and
tangled jungle, with an underwood of the twining bamboo and
thorny mimosa. It is only the most intense excitement that could
carry a man through fatigue such as this; and a prize worthy of all
that he has undergone is needed to reward him for the day’s work.
Under these circumstances, it is clear that, the more imminent the
peril, the more satisfactory is the sport considered. There would be
very little gratification in toiling all day in a temperature of 130°, if
there was no opportunity presented of risking one’s life. Mr Baker’s
enjoyment must have reached its climax when he was actually
wounded by an elephant’s tusk. This indeed compensated for much
hardship and discomfort. It happened in this wise:
About two days’ journey from Newera Ellia is situated a large tract
of country called the Park. This is the most favourite resort of Ceylon
sportsmen, as elephants are generally abundant. The scenery is
beautiful, of a character which may be inferred from the name it now
bears among Europeans. It is of vast extent, watered by numerous
large rivers, and ornamented by rocky mountains, such as no English
park can boast. The lemon grass grows over the greater part of this
country to a height of ten or twelve feet, and large herds of elephants
wander through it, the crowns of their capacious brown heads, or the
tips of their trunks, tossed occasionally into the air, alone attesting
their presence.
A number of these appearing over the waving grass, delight the
eyes of Mr Baker and his brother one morning as they sally forth
from their night encampment with their usual deadly intent. Upon
discovering the daring intruders, the herd, consisting of ten, rally
round the two leaders, whose deep growls, like rumbling peals of
thunder, is the call in time of danger. Our author and his brother
immediately advance towards the dense mass, nothing daunted by so
imposing an array. A part of the herd beat a retreat, but five charge
viciously; they are dropped in as many successive shots, the last at a
distance of only ten paces; four more are slain in retreat, a faithless
mother alone escaping, whose little charge, so unusually deserted,
Mr Baker captures, by taking hold of his tail and trunk, and throwing
him on his back. Those who have seen an unweaned elephant calf
will admit this to be no very difficult feat. Having secured the infant,
and left him in charge of his brother and the gun-bearers, Mr Baker
returns to seek his legitimate trophies in the shape of tails.

“I had one barrel still loaded, and I was pushing my way through the tangled
grass towards the spot where the five elephants lay together, when I suddenly
heard Wallace shriek out, ‘Look out, sir! Look out!—an elephant’s coming!’
“I turned round in a moment; and close past Wallace, from the very spot where
the last dead elephant lay, came the very essence and incarnation of a ‘rogue’
elephant in full charge. His trunk was thrown high in the air, his ears were cocked,
his tail stood high above his back as stiff as a poker, and, screaming exactly like the
whistle of a railway engine, he rushed upon me through the high grass with a
velocity that was perfectly wonderful. His eyes flashed as he came on, and he had
singled me out as his victim.
“I have often been in dangerous positions, but I never felt so totally devoid of
hope as I did in this instance. The tangled grass rendered retreat impossible. I had
only one barrel loaded, and that was useless, as the upraised trunk protected his
forehead. I felt myself doomed; the few thoughts that rush through men’s minds in
such hopeless positions flew through mine, and I resolved to wait for him till he
was close upon me before I fired, hoping that he might lower his trunk and expose
his forehead.
“He rushed along at the pace of a horse in full speed; in a few moments, as the
grass flew to the right and left before him, he was close upon me, but still his trunk
was raised and I would not fire. One second more, and at this headlong pace he
was within three feet of me; down slashed his trunk with the rapidity of a whip-
thong, and with a shrill scream of fury he was upon me.
“I fired at that instant; but in the twinkling of an eye I was flying through the air
like a ball from a bat. At the moment of firing I had jumped to the left, but he
struck me with his tusk in full charge upon my right thigh, and hurled me eight or
ten paces from him. That very moment he stopped, and, turning round, he beat the
grass about with his trunk, and commenced a strict search for me. I heard him
advancing close to the spot where I lay as still as death, knowing that my last
chance lay in concealment. I heard the grass rustling close to the spot where I lay;
closer and closer he approached, and he at length beat the grass with his trunk
several times exactly above me. I held my breath, momentarily expecting to feel his
ponderous foot upon me. Although I had not felt the sensation of fear while I had
stood opposed to him, I felt like what I never wish to feel again while he was
deliberately hunting me up. Fortunately I had reserved my fire until the rifle had
almost touched him, for the powder and smoke had nearly blinded him, and had
spoiled his acute power of scent. To my joy I heard the rustling of the grass grow
fainter; again, I heard it at a still greater distance; at length it was gone.”

“There could not,” says our author naïvely, “be a better

exemplification of a rogue than in this case.” The knowing way in
which he had remained patiently concealed, while his enemies
expended their ammunition and energies upon the herd, and the
sudden and furious manner in which he came upon them, while
unsuspectingly appropriating the tails of his brethren, quite justifies
this opinion of Mr Baker’s. He escapes triumphantly, as he deserves
to have done, and leaves Mr Baker to contemplate his wounded leg
for some days, during which he is unable to move. We must do our
author the justice to say that he seeks his revenge as soon as he is
able to put his foot to the ground, and a few days afterwards we find
him chasing a herd, until he says “my leg, which had lost all feeling,
suddenly gave way, and I lay sprawling on my face, incapable of
going a step farther. I had killed four elephants; it was very bad luck,
as the herd consisted of eleven, but my leg gave way when most
required.” If Mr Baker is not satisfied, we are. We shall not,
therefore, follow him through the exciting details of a jungle trip,
with which he concludes his most interesting work, and from which
he and his two companions, the Hon. Mr Stuart Wortley and Mr E.
Palliser, return in three weeks, with a bag of fifty elephants, five deer,
and two buffaloes. We have said enough to indicate to the reader in
search of excitement by his fireside where it is to be found—more
than enough to tempt the enthusiastic sportsman to exchange for a
season the comforts of home for the wild stirring life of the elephant-
hunter; and we may venture to assure him that he will ever recur
with delight to the enjoyment and rough luxury that a jungle trip
alone affords, and he will be ready to adopt, as we do ourselves, the
concluding words of our author:

“The well-arranged tent, the neatly spread table, the beds forming a triangle
around the walls, and the clean guns piled in a long row against the gun-rack, will
often recall a tableau in after years, in countries far from this land of
independence. The acknowledged sports of England will appear child’s play; the
exciting thrill will be wanting, when a sudden rush in the jungle brings the rifle on
full cock; and the heavy guns will become useless mementos of past days, like the
dusty helmets of yore, hanging up in an old hall. The belt and the hunting-knife
will alike share the fate of the good rifle, and the blade, now so keen, will blunt
from sheer neglect. The slips, which have held the necks of dogs of such staunch
natures, will hang neglected from the wall; and all these souvenirs of wild sports,
contrasted with the puny implements of the English chase, will awaken once more
the longing desire for the ‘Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon.’”
 GRAY’S LETTERS.[13]

We do not intend upon the present occasion, however legitimate

the opportunity, to trespass long upon the patience of our readers, in
discussing the merits or demerits of Gray’s poetical style. Some few
remarks we are tempted to make, chiefly of a conciliatory character;
but we shall very rapidly pass on to his Life and Letters, which are
the more immediate subject of the book before us. In critical debates
upon English poetry, the name of Gray has been often a rallying
point for the disputants: he has been held up as a bright example by
one party, and by another, as a salutary warning to all youthful
aspirants. “Of all English poets,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “he was
the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendour
of which poetical style seems to be capable.” We all know what
Wordsworth thought of the splendour of this poetical style, and how
severely he and others have dealt with it.
Poetry is a very difficult subject to reason about; and the more
refined, and the more bold, and the more complex the associations of
thought in which it deals, the more difficult does it become to prove,
by any process of argument, that it is good or bad. As little can you
teach a man to enjoy poetry, to discover it when it lies before him, by
any rules, or process of reasoning, analytic or synthetic, as you could
teach a man by the same methods to write poetry. For there is always
in the more subtle kinds of poetry an element of unreason; plain
truth is somewhere set at defiance; and who can possibly draw the
line, or say precisely to what extent imagination, under the sway of
feeling or sentiment, shall be allowed to transgress on the palpable
verities of our senses, or our better judgment? How can reason
decide exactly, where reason herself shall be set aside in favour of
emotion? Emotion, after all, must have her voice in the matter; and
the final result must be some uncertain compromise between them.
 We will draw an illustration of our meaning from no vulgar critic.
The refined taste of Mr Landor will be at once admitted; nor will he
lie open to the objection often brought against our northern critics,
that they are too metaphysical or analytic in their strictures upon
metaphorical language. We extract the two following annotations,
from his conversation between himself and Southey, on two several
passages in Milton’s Paradise Lost. They will aptly illustrate the
difficulty which every one will encounter who has to reason upon the
right and wrong of a poet’s imagination.
“What a beautiful expression is there in verse 546, which I do not
remember that any critic has noticed—
‘Obtain the brow of some high-climbing hill.’

Here the hill itself is instinct with life and activity.”

Agreed: it is a beautiful expression; and if any one insists that a hill
does not climb, but is a thing to be climbed upon, we pronounce him
a blockhead for his pains. Nevertheless the blockhead has palpable
truth upon his side. The hill does not climb in fact, and there is no
process we know of by which it can be made to climb in his
imagination. Now for our second comment—
“‘Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies.’

Often and often have these verses been quoted without a suspicion
how strongly the corporeal is substituted for the moral. However
Atlantean his shoulders might be, the might of monarchies could no
more be supported by them than by the shoulders of a grasshopper.”
Here, Mr Landor takes part with plain matter-of-fact against that
play of poetic imagination, which often succeeds in making one deep
and harmonious impression out of incongruous materials, merely by
the dexterous rapidity with which these are passed before the mind.
We confess to have admired the bold, vague, instantaneous,
transitory combination of physical with moral properties, which we
have in these celebrated lines. The monarchies do not rest directly on
the “shoulders,” but on the sage man with these broad shoulders, and
the epithet “Atlantean,” by suggesting immediately a mythological
person, has already half allegorised the figure. The shoulders which
are for an instant brought before the mind’s eye, have never
supported any less honourable weight than that of a whole world. Mr
Landor, however, may be right; we are not disputing the correctness
of his criticism; we are only pointing out the inherent difficulties of
the subject. Mr Landor may be right; but what answer would he give
to the man of plain understanding who did not comprehend how a
hill could climb, and who should insist upon it, that a mound of earth
could no more be “instinct with life and activity” than broad
shoulders could help a man to govern well?
Turning over the pages of a work of Meinherr Feuchtersleben on
Medical Psychology, we met with the remark, that the effort to enjoy
or attend to some of our finer sensations was not always followed by
an increase in those pleasurable sensations. Thus, he says, we
distend our nostrils and inspire vigorously when we would take our
fill of some agreeable odour, and yet certain of the more refined
scents escape us by this very effort to seize and appropriate them.
Passing by a bed of violets, the flowers themselves perhaps unseen,
how charming a fragrance has hit upon the unwarned sense! Turn
back, and strenuously inhale for the very purpose of enjoying it more
fully, the fairy favour has escaped you. It floated on the air, playing
with the sense of him who sought not for it; but quite refusing to be
fed upon voraciously by the prying and dilated nostril. Something
like this may be observed in the case of poetical enjoyment. The
susceptible reader feels it, though he sought it not, and the more
varied the culture of his mind, the more likely is he to be visited by
this pleasure; but it will not be captured by any effort of hard,
vigorous attention, or the merely scrutinising intellect. The poetry of
the verse, like the fragrance of the violet, will not be rudely seized;
and he who knits his brow and strains his faculty of thought over the
light and musical page may wonder how it happens that the charm
grows less as his desire to fix and to appropriate it has increased.
When, therefore, we discuss the merits of a poetical style, we enter
upon a subject on which we must not expect to reason with strict
certainty, or arrive at very dogmatic conclusions. To the last some
minds will find a glorious imagination, where others will perceive
only a logical absurdity. We can only come, as we have said, to some
compromise between reason and emotion. They meet together in the
arena of imagination, and must settle their rival claims as they best
can.
That Gray was a true poet surely no one will deny. Who has
bequeathed, in proportion to the extent or volume of his writings, a
greater number of those individual lines and passages which live in
the memory of all men, and are recognised as the most perfect
expression of a given thought or sentiment that our British world has
produced? But such lines and passages rarely bear the stamp of the
poet’s mannerism. They would not have gained their universal
acceptation if they had. Highest excellence is all of one style. That
manner which constitutes the peculiarity of Gray, and which
distinguishes him from other poets, we certainly do not admire, and
we will give the best reasons for our dislike to it that we are able.
Poetry we have somewhere heard defined as “passionate
rhythmical expression;” and, if our memory fail us, and we do not
quote correctly, we nevertheless venture to promulgate this as a very
sufficient definition. It is passionate rhythmical expression; and it
becomes imaginative because it is passionate. Every one knows that
strong feeling runs to metaphor and imagery to express itself; or, in
other words, that a predominant sentiment will gather round itself a
host of kindred ideas held often together by almost imperceptible
associations. In proportion as the mind is full of ideas or
remembered objects, will be the complex structure which will grow
out of this operation. It is not, therefore, because a strain is complex,
ornate, or full of learning, that it ceases to be spontaneous or natural.
If Milton rolls out thought after thought, gathered from the literature
of Rome or Greece, the verse may be quite as natural, quite as
genuine an expression of sentiment as any ballad in the Percy
Reliques. But what is desired is, that, learned or not, the strain have
this character of spontaneity, that it be the language in which some
mortal has verily and spontaneously thought. We do not mean, of
course, that the style should not be corrected by afterthought, but the
corrections should be made in the same spirit, the language moving
from the thought and passion of the man. Now, there is much of
Gray’s writing of which it cannot be said that the language or
imagery flows by any such spontaneous process; in which we are
perpetually reminded of effort and artifice, which, as it never came
from, so it can never go home straightway to any human soul.
 We might venture even to take for an instance the popular line—
“E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.”

This quotation has obtained a general currency: “ashes” and their

“fires” bear each other out so well, that the careless reader has no
doubt the meaning is all right. Yet we suspect that very many quote
the line without any distinct meaning whatever attached to it. And
for this reason,—no Englishman would ever naturally have expressed
the sentiment in this language. Men, at least some men, are careful
where they shall lay their bones; they would sleep amongst their
fathers, their countrymen, their children; some seek a retired spot;
some where friends will congregate; some choose the sun, and some
the shadow. They endue the dead clay that will be lying under the
turf with some vague sentiment of feeling—with some residue of the
old affections. Would any Englishman, impressed with such a
feeling, go back in imagination to classic times, when the body was
burnt, and speak of “ashes” which never will exist, rather than of the
slumbering corpse which his eye must be following, as he speaks,
into the earth? Here is the whole stanza:—
“On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires,
E’en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.”

It is altogether, it will be seen, a very elaborate structure. Gray was a

genuine lover of nature; yet he would rather make a patchwork out of
poetical phrases, and the traditional imagery of the poets, than place
himself in the scene he meant to describe, and watch in imagination
the effects it would produce upon him. The critics have remarked
that, in the opening stanzas of the Elegy, events are described as
contemporaneous which must have been successive. We have sunset
in one stanza:—
“Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.”

And in the next, we have advanced into the perfect moonlight:—

“Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain,
Of such as, wandering near her secret bow’r,
 Molest her ancient solitary reign.”

It may be argued, indeed, that time does not stand still with the poet;
and that, as he lingered in the churchyard, twilight had given way to
midnight. But we are afraid that the true answer is simply this—that
the ivy-mantled tower, the moon, and the owl, were, at all events, to
be introduced as fit accompaniments of the scene; and that no
question was ever asked how they would harmonise with the sunset
view of distant fields, that we had glanced at just before.
“Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!”

That one who loved mountains, and frequented them, should put a
string of unmeaning words like these into the mouth of his Welsh
bard! There is absolutely nothing in them. Give your Welsh harper
the finest ear imaginable, and put him on what mountain you will,
what “desert caves” will he hear sighing in response to giant oaks,
and these again to the torrent beneath?
“O’er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe.”

The oaks waving in wrath “their hundred arms,” is a fine frenzy

enough; but it is spoilt again by the “hoarser murmurs breathe,”—
words in which no man ever thought.
Instances of this artificial manner of building up the rhyme, it
would be superfluous to multiply. Let us rather drop a hint against
carrying our strictures to an undue degree of severity. There is,
especially, a running charge of plagiarism brought against Gray, and
all such composite poets, which is altogether unfair. If they have
formed their style in the study of other poets, it follows that they
must repeat the phrases of their predecessors; but, if they do this in
the expression of a new thought of their own, such use of their
language must not be described as plagiarism. A critic before us thus
comments on some lines in the Elegy:—
“Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team a-field,
How bent the woods beneath their sturdy stroke.”
 “This stanza is made up of various pieces inlaid. ‘Stubborn glebe’ is
from Gay; ‘drive a-field’ from Milton; ‘sturdy stroke’ from
Spencer.”[14] Now, there is not one of these expressions which does
not here fall very properly into its place; and a writer familiar with
poetic diction would make use of them without any reference to the
authors from whom they might have been, in the first place, received.
Indeed, it would be quite impossible for any one to compose in this
mosaic fashion; nor is there any end to the charges of plagiarism that
might, on this principle, be brought. If such expressions as “sturdy
stroke,” and “drive a-field,” are to be traced to the ownership of some
predecessor, one does not see how one is to move at all. The language
of the country, like its arable land, is all appropriated. In the passage
here commented on, the critic needed not have stopped where he
did. “How jocund,” he might have added, is from Fletcher, and “how
bent the woods,” from Dryden; and then only consider if these three
lines were composed after such a fashion, what a wonderful piece of
workmanship they must be! Whilst we are as hostile as any to
laborious, conscious artifice, or the mere repetition of traditional
phrases and images, we must deprecate a species of criticism which
would shut out the poet from his legitimate resources, deter him
from the careful study of his predecessors, and either drive him into
a poor, timid, barren style of composition, or else induce him to seek
the praise of originality by coining new words and fantastical
expressions.
We must now address ourselves to the work before us, The
Correspondence of Gray and Mason, as here presented to us by the
careful editorship of Mr Mitford.
Mr Mitford has by his editorial offices for ever associated his own
name with that of the poet Gray. In the Aldine edition of his works he
performed the good office of restoring the genuine text of Gray’s
letters, which his first biographer, Mason, had so singularly garbled.
For this and other good services of the same kind the public were
already indebted to Mr Mitford. He has now, we presume, completed
his labours on this subject by the publication of The Correspondence
of Gray and Mason in the form Mason himself had preserved it, with
copious notes explanatory of all things necessary to be known, and
some which, we are happy to think, are not quite necessary items in
the sum of human knowledge.
 The publication of this octavo volume in its separate form was, we
suppose, inevitable. The course of editorial labours will not run
smooth any more than any other courses. In due order of things, Mr
Mitford, when he prepared his edition of Gray’s Letters for the press,
should have had the materials which form this volume put into his
hands; he could then have incorporated in his book such additions to
the letters of Gray as are to be found here; he could have avoided
reprinting a considerable number of them, and might have given us
such of the letters of Mason (none others are of the least value) as
throw light upon the biography and writings of the poet Gray. But
this natural order of things was not to be permitted. It was, we must
presume, after the Aldine edition had been printed that the
manuscript of Mason came under his inspection. Thus this large new
volume was judged indispensable, although it is manifestly destined
to a very brief existence; and, in spite of its luxury of type, and its
neat livery of green and gold, must be absorbed, its personality
entirely lost, in the next and more complete edition of the works of
Gray.
When Mason prepared the letters of his distinguished friend for
publication, he was not sufficiently unreasonable to thrust many of
his own upon the notice of the reader; but he took care to preserve
carefully in a manuscript volume the correspondence of both parties,
or at least such portions of his own letters as he thought were
creditable to himself. This manuscript volume he bequeathed to his
friend Mr Stonhewer; from him “it passed,” Mr Mitford tells us in his
preface, “into the hands of his relative, Mr Bright of Skeffington Hall,
Leicestershire. When, in the year 1845, the library of Gray was sold
by the sons of that gentleman, then deceased, this volume of
Correspondence was purchased by Mr Penn of Stoke Park, and by
him was kindly placed in my hands for publication.”
Mr Mitford has not only judged it worthy of a separate publication,
but has bestowed the utmost pains in preparing it for the press. His
industrial annotation strikes us with a sort of wonder. We are
amazed at the pertinacity of research, all the more laudable, we
presume, because the prize held forth was of such almost
inappreciable value. “So you have christened Mr Dayrolles’ child,”
says Mr Gray to the Rev William Mason, and passes on, regardless,
to other matter—to something pertaining to the then Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Not so the conscientious editor. Who is this Mr
Dayrolles? and why has the christening of his child by the Rev.
William Mason been glanced at by the poet? Forthwith a ransacking
amongst all memoirs; we are referred to Chesterfield’s Letters,
Maty’s edition, and Lord Mahon’s edition, and Walpole’s
Miscellaneous Letters; and at length, in a manuscript memorandum
(so far do we extend our researches), we find the bit of scandal: this
“Mr Dayrolles’ child” is not the child of Mr Dayrolles at all, but of one
Mr Stanhope; and to this it was that, we are told, “Mr Gray silently
pointed.”—P. 129.
It is not always that we get even such a result. Sometimes we have
a long list of references, with some dates and facts, dry as a parish
register. Here is a note on a certain Mr Cambridge.

“On Mr Cambridge and his habits of conversation, see ‘Walpole’s Letters to Lady
Ossory,’ vol. i. pp. 132, 140, 410; vol. ii. p. 242; Walpole to Mason, vol. i. p. 235;
and ‘Nichol’s Literary Illustrations,’ vol. i. p. 130; and ‘Rockingham Memoirs,’ vol.
i. p. 215, for his letter to Lord Hardwicke, in June 1765. In conversation he was said
to be full of entertainment, liveliness, and anecdote. One sarcastic joke on
Capability Brown testifies his wit, and his Scribleriad still survives in the praises of
Dr Warton; yet the radical fault that pervades it is well shown in Annual Review, ii.
584.”—P. 184.

Even the “one sarcastic joke” we are not permitted to hear; but we
are kindly told in what volume of the Annual Review we shall find
the “radical fault,” pointed out of a satire that lives only “in the
praises of Dr Warton.” One more instance we must select, that our
readers may form some just appreciation of the indefatigable
research of our learned editor. The name of Sir Richard Lyttleton
being mentioned, we are invited to the perusal of the following note:
—

“Richard Lyttleton, K.B. He married the Lady Rachel Russell, sister of John
Duke of Bedford, and widow of Scrope Egerton, Duke of Bridgewater. He was first
page of honour to Queen Caroline; then successively Captain of Marines, Aide-de-
Camp to the Earl of Stair at the battle of Dettingen, and Deputy Quartermaster-
General in South Britain, with the rank of Lieut.-Colonel and Lieut.-General, &c.
He was fifth son of Sir Thomas, fourth baronet and younger brother of George,
First Lord Lyttleton.—See some letters by him in ‘Chatham Correspondence,’ vol.
ii. p. 173, &c. He was Governor of Minorca in 1764, and subsequently Governor of
Guernsey.—See ‘Walpole’s Misc. Letters,’ iv. pp. 363, 424. He died in 1770. His
house, in the Harley Street corner, 1 Cavendish Square, was bought by the
Princess Emily, and was afterwards Mr Hope’s, and then Mr Watson Taylor’s.—See
‘Grenville Papers,’ i. pp. 49, 249; and ii. pp. 442, 449. When in Minorca, he was
involved in some dispute with Samuel Johnson, who held a situation under him.—
See reference to it in ‘Walpole’s Letters to Lord Hertford,’ Feb. 6, 1764.”

All this, we doubt not, is very praiseworthy; but where is it to end?

A learned man writing to another learned man, says, in honest blunt
vernacular, “Have you seen Mr Thomson?” and passes on to other
matter. Is the heart of an editor to beat within him till he has
discovered who this Thomson was, and everything discoverable
about him—what house he lived in, and whom he quarrelled with?
This Thomson is mentioned only once, and we have nothing of him
but his name. The more mysterious, seems the indefatigable editor to
think; and the more meritorious, if from so slight a clue he can
succeed in identifying this defunct Thomson. Whereupon a
ransacking of all libraries and innumerable references,—see this, see
that! see, see! We wonder if there is any one man in Great Britain,
not an editor, so laboriously idle as to climb the steps of a library to
see after all these surprising discoveries.
Books, it seems, are used by different persons for very different
purposes. Some build up theories of all sorts with them; children
take them out of the book-case, and build houses and castles with
them, perhaps almost as substantial; the good monks in one of the
monasteries of the Levant, Mr Curzon tells us, used them as mats, or
cushions, to protect their bare feet from the cold pavement of the
chapel; and others, again, pull them about, and toss over the leaves
with restless agitation—to find who Mr Thomson was! Of the two
last, we infinitely prefer the quiet serviceable employment of them by
the monks whom Mr Curzon visited.
“There is a pleasure in poetic pains”—there must be a charm in
labour editorial that only editors can know. There is withal, it seems,
a gravity of duty, a weight of responsibility, which they only can duly
appreciate. We are happy to hear, that in proportion to the dulness is
the virtue of their labours. “To give some personality,” says our
present editor in his preface, “to names, most of them new, even to
those who are acquainted with the common biographies of Gray,
has been found, from the lapse of time, a matter of some difficulty;
and success has only been attained by the assistance of various
friends. To have passed over this part of the task would have been
unsatisfactory, and considered a dereliction of duty!” It is added,
with a little inconsistency, that the persons whose names are here
heard for the first time, “formed the select and intimate society of
one who was not remarkable for the facility with which his
acquaintance was gained.” What intimate friend have we here added
to the well-known list? But let us grant that the mantle of the poet
ennobles all it touches, does the Reverend William Mason also rank
among the inspired?—for we find that his letters are edited with the
same reverential care.
We shall be answered, that if we do not think highly of the
immortal author of Elfrida, and Caractacus, and The English
Garden, others do. Mr Mitford does. “The place in his library was
pointed out to me,” he pathetically tells us, “where Mason usually
sate and wrote. His poetical chair—sedes beata—was kindly
bequeathed to me; and I have left it by will to the Poet Laureate of
the day, that it may rest amongst the sacred brotherhood!” What an
announcement for Mr Tennyson to read! What will he do with the
chair when it comes? A superstitious man would hardly venture to sit
in it. Who knows what spirit of drowsiness may be still clinging about
it?
If we have been provoked into any impatient remarks on this
excess of editorship, we would at the same time express—as we feel—
an undiminished respect for Mr Mitford. He is a literary veteran who
has performed many a good service. We would rather retract every
word, and beg that every expression be set down to mere petulance
on our part, than be thought wanting in personal respect to one who
has well earned his reputable position in the world of letters. But we
cannot help ourselves; we must “tell the tale,” as the tale tells itself to
us.
Of the few additions made in the present volume to the letters of
Gray, those which congratulate Mason on his clerical promotion, and
on his marriage, are amongst the most sprightly and entertaining.
The following extracts may be new to our readers:—